If I can't read it, I won't!

[RailRon]

Now I'm one of the Gauge members whose primary language is NOT English. (My spoken primary language is Swiss-German dialect, in elementary school I first learned classical German, then - as a Swiss - first foreign language was French, about 1/4 of the Swiss speak French!) English only came in high school. I was lucky to have a brilliant English teacher, and I love the English language. Later in my professsion almost all of the technical literature was in English, and then I learned a lot of everyday English (or American! :mrgreen: ) singing Country and Rock 'n Roll songs in a band. And finally, of course, as a model railroader modeling American prototype, nearly all the books I read - by Moody, Beebe & Clegg, Ferrell etc. - were in English, too...

That's why I think I have a certain commandment of the English language. But of course there are still lots of flaws in my posts, let alone typos (typoes? ), and as much as I proofread any post before I send it off, I ALWAYS find some glitches AFTER submitting it.

Now I have been a teacher (retired now), so I am professionally used to look for errors. And of course in almost every single post I am able to find some typos, mix-ups like 'their' - 'there', 'two' - 'too', and so on. And that's where I am returning to the theme of our thread: "If I can't read it, I won't!"

That's exactly what I do.

I won't even elaborate of the SMS-pseudo-language used by many of the young today. A few abbreviations are useful and/or even funny, but if you only have a blurb of random letters and numbers instead of a readable sentence, I quit. Sorry, in my eyes this is simply a mutilation of a language, and in the long run a communication on a certain level will become more and more impossible. (Lots of youngsters today hardly are able to form one single, coherent sentence! hock: )

Let's take normal, everyday English: When, after reading five lines of a ongoing text block of half a page, I'm still asking myself 'What on Earth this guy wants to tell me?', I often drop out and go to the next thread. And heck, this could be a pity, because this modeler really has to tell us all something really interesting. Too bad that he can't articulate himself clear enough. He perhaps never learnt this in his school time - and this probably is a loss to both himself AND to us, the readers of his information. Not everybody is a born writer, so more often than not I try to be patient and reread his post again, until I understand the meaning. We simply can't blame or even belittle somebody who has these problems!

BUT IF I see a post which consists of one single paragraph of 40 plus lines, ALL written in lower case letters, without any punctuation and riddled with SMS-abbreviation-babble, THEN I am throwing the towel without even trying to read that stuff.

IMHO (e.g. this is a well-known abbreviation which would be ok anywhere ) EVERYBODY should be able to take a long text apart into readable pieces. And everybody should be able to use a spell-checking program on his text to get the worst glitches out. This simply has something to do with decency and respect for the fellow Gauge members.

You don't have to be a language guru to do this, but the reader of your post surely appreciates if it has been carefully prepared. When somebody only sketchily jots down a few confuse ideas, it shows. And then it is not a bad idea NOT to read that blurb and go on to more meangingful posts. And luckily our forum has lots of these, I think!

(Well, it also shows that I am and stay an old teacher, so it's time to step down from my soap box, hehehe! End of rant! :mrgreen: )

Ron